June 22, 2023- numbers 75, 76, 77, 78, 79

Spoilers

This evening, I went for five season three episodes and we got all kinds of variety.

“The Midnight Sun”

Whoa, what a hopeless feeling episode this was. Apocalyptic, twice within.

The earth’s orbit has been changed and it is now moving toward the sun and the temperatures on earth were getting hotter and hotter. Two women, Nora and Mrs. Bronson, were the only people remaining in their apartment building, trying to stay cool and survive the heat.

Water, looters, their own minds all were struggles they needed to face. As the news gets worse, the two women get closer to the end. Mrs. Bronson succumbs to the heat and Nora seems to be ready to go as well.

Then we learn that Nora was actually in a fever dream and that none of what we saw was real. However, we learn from Mrs. Bronson and the doctor that was attending Nora that the world was off its orbit but going away from the sun. The very opposite was happening, the planet was freezing to death.

This episode could certainly be used today as a metaphor for climate change, I’m not sure that would have been the basis for the idea back in 1961. The episode gives us a picture of how the human race would react to such an event, with a lot of anger, frustration and selfishness. Even though there would also be some good people as well.

“Still Valley”

Civil War conflict mixed with the occult and the devil… good times.

Not sure how to feel about this one.

“This is Joseph Paradine, Confederate cavalry, as he heads down toward a small town in the middle of a valley. But very shortly, Joseph Paradine will make contact with the enemy. He will also make contact with an outpost not found on a military map—an outpost called the Twilight Zone.”

Paradine wound up in the town, but he found all the Union troops frozen still. Not dead. Not asleep. Just standing still. He did not know how this happened, but… he would find out.

An old man was there and he claimed to have used black magic to freeze the Yankees. He did so by reading spells out of a book labeled ‘witchcraft.’ By doing so, he said that he had to align himself with Satan. The old man was dying and gave the book to Paradine, who returned to his camp and explained what happened, proving that he had this power.

The end was strange because Paradine was uncertain if he should continue to use the book because he had to renounce God as well as align with the devil. He ends up throwing the book into the fire.

Not the best episode I have seen. The characters were inconsistent and choices did not make much sense. Why did Paradine suddenly realize that he had to renounce God when he already used the book to freeze a troop of Union soldiers off camera? And these soldiers were meant to go to Gettysburg after this.

Not a very good episode.

“The Jungle”

“The carcass of a goat, a dead finger, a few bits of broken glass and stone, and Mr. Alan Richards, a modern man of a modern age, hating with all his heart something in which he cannot believe and preparing – although he doesn’t know it – to take the longest walk of his life, right down to the center – of The Twilight Zone.”

Alan Richards and his wife Doris have just returned from Africa where Alan was on a business trip. He was apparently cursed by some natives and his wife was really superstitious. She snuck all kinds of good luck charms, including a lion’s tooth, into their home and his pockets.

He leaves the tooth behind at a bar. Can you guess what happened next? I bet you can.

This one was dumb. Alan kept hearing drums and animal sounds as he tried to get home, only to be mauled by a lion that was on his bed (perhaps after already eating Doris?).

The animal sounds were unintentionally funny and the things that happened to Alan along the way were more and more ridiculous. And where was Doris?

“Once Upon a Time”

I thought this was a really creative and interesting episode. Featuring Buster Keaton himself, this episode was a tribute to the silent pictures that Keaton made his fame in.

The episode started out in a literal silent picture, following along Keaton as Woodrow Mulligan from the year 1890. It had the background music, the intertitles giving the audience dialogue to read and plenty of slapstick humor that was prevalent in the silent era of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin.

Mulligan worked as a janitor in a laboratory where the head scientist had created a ‘time helmet’ which gave the wearer a chance of going to any year and spend 30 minutes (this time seemed to change throughout the episode. A bit of a plot hole here). Mulligan put it on and was transported to 1961.

In 1961, we get sound, including Mulligan speaking aloud. It was no longer a silent picture. He met up with a man named Rollo and then it felt very much like a ‘Laurel and Hardy’ type film.

I enjoyed this tribute to the era of silent films and the icon Buster Keaton. It felt like one of those ‘very special episodes’ of shows(like “Atomic Shakespeare” for Moonlighting). I love the big swing for the episode.

“Five Characters in Search of an Exit”

Okay, I did not see that coming.

Five characters stuck in a strange circular prison. They could not remember anything. All they knew were what they were: A clown, a bagpiper, a ballerina, a tramp and a major.

The major was the newest arrival and was struggling trying to make sense of what had happened. He desperately tried to find an exit from their prison, trying everything. He would not give up even with the others not supporting him. The clown, in particular, was spending more time taunting him or making fun of him than being useful. The ballerina though seemed to believe in the major.

They stood on each other’s shoulders (in a fun pit of camera work) and tried to climb out, only to fall. The ballet dancer was injured, but that still did not deter the major, who set up a rope with the end of his sword to use as a grappling hook.

This time, the major makes it to the top and falls into a pile of snow. This is when we find out the truth… they were all dolls in a container during a toy drive for Christmas.

“Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in a distorted image of human life. But this added hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a Major. Tonight’s cast of players on the odd stage—known as—The Twilight Zone.”

What a twist that was. No way I saw that coming. The ending took this episode to a much higher level than it had been. This was a top notch pay off. There have been some episodes where they have a great build but the ending is disappointing. This one stuck the landing, big time.

June 22, 2023- numbers 72, 73, 74

Spoilers

“The Grave”

The Twilight Zone returned to the Old West for another story involving Lee Marvin and Roscoe P. Coltrane.

This episode was a creepy tale of fear and revenge. A local rapscallion named Pinto Sykes is gunned down by a crew of townsfolks. The man, Conny Miller, who had been hired by the town to hunt Pinto down, returned to the town to find out that Pinto was already dead and buried.

The townspeople told Conny that Pinto claimed on his deathbed that if Conny ever came to Pinto’s grave, that Pinto would reach up and grab him.

The others in the bar, led by Roscoe (I know his name was not Roscoe, but the actor, James Best, is best known by me for his role as the Sheriff on Dukes of Hazzard), laid wagers that Conny did not have the courage to go and kneel by Pinto’s graveside. Conny made he bet (though honestly, he was not really quick about it).

The next day, Conny was found dead over the grave.

This was very atmospheric and creepy. I liked most of this episode. The only issue I had was that Conny did not end up shooting Pinto, it was someone else in town. We only heard about Conny and Pinto’ relationship and we did not see any of it. Why did Pinto hold such a negative feeling toward Conny? I’m really not sure.

Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef appeared in this episode and both men are veterans of Western movies, lending a high level of credibility to the show.

“It’s a Good Life”

A monster story about the worst monster ever… a little boy named Anthony.

“Tonight’s story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there’s a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the village. Just by using his mind, he took away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines—because they displeased him—and he moved an entire community back into the dark ages—just by using his mind. Now I’d like to introduce you to some of the people in Peaksville, Ohio. This is Mr. Fremont. It’s in his farmhouse that the monster resides. This is Mrs. Fremont. And this is Aunt Amy, who probably had more control over the monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day she forgot. She began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn’t like singing, so his mind snapped at her, turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you’re looking at now. She sings no more. And you’ll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because, once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something, didn’t I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He’s six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you’d better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone.”

We spent the episode watching the adults cower to this little boy, telling him how his bad behaviors were the right thing and how they were happy that he just killed thee people or created this three headed animal and then killed it.

I really wanted someone to step up and do something about Anthony. There was a time when one of the dinner party members, drunk as he was, tried to get the others to do something about the boy and he wound up getting turned into a jack-in-the-box and eventually sent to the “cornfield” which was a place Anthony sent all people who had negative thoughts.

Bill Mumy played Anthony after playing Billy in “Long Distance Call.” He was very sinister and unsettling as the little monster. I wish there was some form of resolution to the episode, but it is a well known, iconic episode.

“Deaths-Head Revisited”

One of the most haunting episodes of The Twilight Zone yet. Deaths-Head Revisited is a comment on the horrendous circumstances behind the concentration camps run by the Nazis before and during World War II.

A former Nazi SS captain, calling himself Schmidt, came to Dachau, Bavaria to go back to the Dachau concentration camp, walking around the compound, reveling in the remembrances and nostalgia. He is met by a man whom he takes as a caretaker of the camp. He does recognize the man as Alfred Becker, a former prisoner at the camp.

Becker takes Schmidt around the camp, as frightening sounds continued around. Finally, Becker told him that Captain Lutze (Schmidt’s real name) was to be put on trial for his crimes against humanity. Lutze realizes that Becker had been killed in Dachau years before and that this was a ghost facing him. Lutze wound up going mad, and would end up taken away in the present day to a mnetal instution.

The doctor who examined Lutze said “Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?” An answer mentioned in Serling’s closing narration:

“There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes; all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”

The only criticism I have for this episode, which I found extremely powerful and haunting, was that I wish Lutze was not such a one-note villain. When he returned to Dachau, he was just as sinister, just as sadistic as he had ever been and he was outward about it. I would have like to have seen more than just the mustache-twirling villain that he was. Something with more layers would have made this even more powerful. Even still, this is one of my favorite episodes so far.

June 21, 2023- number 71

Spoilers

“The Mirror”

Columbo is Fidel Castro?

Okay, so not Castro, but a man named General Ramos Clemente. But it is Peter Falk, famously who would become Lt. Columbo- one of the most iconic detectives of all-time, playing this role. I have to say it was distracting. That is not the fault of the episode, but I could not help that.

You see this trend in the time having white actors play the ethnic roles. Someone like Falk playing this character today would be controversial. I do think Peter Falk does a decent job in the role in this episode, but he had several mannerisms that were distracting and did end up pulling me out of the episode.

The episode dealt with the idea of paranoia and of the suspicion of powerful people that those around them have their own motivations. We see the slightest suggestions, in this case a mirror giving the reflections of betrayal, lead to Clemente taking his friends and supporters and executing them all.

“Ramos Clemente, a would-be god in dungarees, strangled by an illusion, that will-o’-the-wisp mirage that dangles from the sky in front of the eyes of all ambitious men, all tyrants—and any resemblance to tyrants living or dead is hardly coincidental, whether it be here or in the Twilight Zone.”

June 20, 2023-numbers 68,69,70

Spoilers

Season three started kind of meh, but then we got three really good episodes in a row.

“The Shelter”

Realistic episodes of The Twilight Zone are few and far between. Most of them have some bit of magical/mystical buts to them. However, every once in awhile we come across those that are grounded in reality.

“The Shelter” has no mysterious aliens, magical curses or unbelievable circumstances. It is about something that could have easily happened in the early days of the Cold War.

It is Dr. Bill Stockton’s birthday and a bunch of the neighborhood friends were over celebrating. When a message from the President comes across the television that there were incoming unidentified objects approaching the US and that people should take cover.

The people assumed that these were incoming nuclear weapons fired from an enemy. Bill, who had been constructing a bomb shelter beneath his home, got his wife and son to work, organizing food, water and essentials while the neighbors, who had teased and made fun of Bill for his choice, scattered back to their houses for their own families.

As Bill locked his family into the bomb shelter, the others came to him, begging Bill to let them inside the shelter too. Bill, saying that it was only built for three, refused. This sent the group into a rage, forming a mob mentality. They were in such a panic that they were even turning on each other, showing their anxieties and their natural bigotry.

Eventually, they constructed a battering ram and broke open the door to the bomb shelter. Just as they had burst through, the announcement that the objects were identified as satellites and were not bombs came through, leaving the mob shocked and dejected over their behaviors.

Honestly, if I were Dr. Bill Stockton, I would have immediately told these people to get the hell out of my house and to never come back. Perhaps he was filled with remorse over the decision to leave everyone outside the shelter, but there was little for him to do.

Watching these friends and neighbors turn on each other and become a hysterical mob was difficult and knowing that this is they nature of the human race is hard to swallow. It was a very compelling episode.

“The Passersby”

Civil War. North vs. South. Southerners vs. Yankees. There have been plenty of stories told about this tragic time of our country’s history.

Episode four of season three of the Twilight Zone heads into the past to the end of the Civil War for a specific ghost story.

A widowed Southern woman sits out front of her home as a wounded sergeant approaches asking for water. Other wounded soldiers walked on the street past the house. We have no idea where they are heading.

The woman told a story about her husband’s death and how she planned on killing the next Union soldier that passed by. The Sergeant told her that a Union soldier had saved his life and that he hoped that she would not do so. When a Union soldier stopped, silhouetted on his horse, and asked for water, she did shoot him, though the gun apparently did not hit him. With light from the Sergeant’s lantern, it was revealed that the soldier on the horse had a terrible injury to his eyes and face, and everyone realized that he was dead… and that they were dead too, the sergeant from the war and the woman from a fever she had.

This is where the episode should have ended. However, it went too far, feeling the need to explain everything going on with needless exposition. What was going on was obvious and then, with the arrival of Lincoln, who was also dead at this point, the episode took a bit of a turn.

“Incident on a dirt road during the month of April, the year 1865. As we’ve already pointed out, it’s a road that won’t be found on a map, but it’s one of many that lead in and out of the Twilight Zone.”

This was excellent until the last five minutes or so. The episode was still exceptional, but the need to explain everything weakened a very eerie episode.

“A Game of Pool”

Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters are actors known for some of their comedic performances, but this was a straight-forward dramatic turn for both and they deliver a compelling and thrilling episode, all around a game of pool.

“Jesse Cardiff, pool shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks. In or out of the Twilight Zone.”

When Jesse Cardiff challenged the late, great Fats Brown to a pool match to determine who was the best pool player of all time, Jesse never expected the challenge to be answered Nor did he expect that he would be playing the game of pool for his life.

Jesse, who spent his entire life in the pool halls honing his game above everything else, placed his life on the line for this challenge.

There was a lot of tension built during the game as the two men argued and debated about their lives and the challenge before them. When Jesse won, Fats was not unhappy. This is because of the twist that Fats knew. As the best ever, Jesse had to replace Fats as the pool challenge and could not enjoy the afterlife.

A really good episode with a twist at the end that helped take the episode to another level. Two great performances too as Klugman and Winters worked extremely well together.

June 19, 2023- numbers 66, 67

Spoilers

“Two”

Season three started off with two well known faces as the only two actors on the show: Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery.

“This is a jungle, a monument built by nature honoring disuse, commemorating a few years of nature being left to its own devices. But it’s another kind of jungle, the kind that comes in the aftermath of man’s battles against himself. Hardly an important battle, not a Gettysburg, or a Marne, or an Iwo Jima; more like one insignificant corner patch in the crazy quilt of combat. But it was enough to end the existence of this little city. It’s been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year, as man used to measure time. The time: perhaps a hundred years from now, or sooner. Or perhaps it’s already happened two million years ago. The place: the signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is the Twilight Zone.”

One of the issues of this show is that there is no real explanation for what was going on here and who these two people were. They had been on different sides as we see when they first interact (a great little fight scene between them) and the fact that they are wearing different uniforms.

I will say that this idea was interesting and I was curious about what was going on. However, as with many Twilight Zone episodes, it felt like the episode wrapped up too quickly and the ending felt forced. This would have been a story that required another twenty minutes or so to make things make more sense.

The final narration from Rod Serling indicated that this had been a love story, but none of that had come through even remotely and that is a major drawback to the episode. It was clearly a comment on the idea of the Cold War and the dangers of nuclear war.

“The Arrival”

The second episode of the season takes some big swings, but does not quite land the plane, if you forgive the horrible pun.

A mystery is set up in the episode.

“This object, should any of you have lived underground for the better parts of your lives and never had occasion to look toward the sky, is an airplane, its official designation a DC-3. We offer this rather obvious comment because this particular airplane, the one you’re looking at, is a freak. Now, most airplanes take off and land as per scheduled. On rare occasions they crash. But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other. Now, yesterday morning this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier. As of its arrival it became an enigma, a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminum, steel, wire and a few thousand other component parts, none of which add up to the right thing. In just a moment, we’re going to show you the tail end of its history. We’re going to give you ninety percent of the jigsaw pieces and you and Mr. Sheckly here of the Federal Aviation Agency will assume the problem of putting them together along with finding the missing pieces. This we offer as an evening’s hobby, a little extracurricular diversion which is really the national pastime in the Twilight Zone.”

An airplane lands at the end of its voyage but nobody is on the flight. No passengers. No pilots. No stewardesses. No one.

What a cool idea for a story. I was fully into the mystery that the show was setting up for me. Speculating about what could possibly have happened was a lot of fun. The show dropped a few hints along the way that the viewers should be thinking about- such as why was there no relatives of the missing flight passengers calling looking for updates?

The resolution of the mystery was also intriguing as it turned out the plane was just an imagined thing. It kind of reminded me of the comic book Department of Truth by James Tynion IV, with how group delusions can become real.

However, this was not a group delusion as everyone else disappeared when Mr. Sheckly proved his idea. Turned out that this was all an illusion from his own mind because of guilt from his failure to solve this plane’s disappearance from 17 year prior.

While I like the overall concept of the episode, I do think the actual execution of the idea was lacking. Was there a triggering event that caused Sheckly to imagine this into existence? The beginning when Sheckly wasn’t yet here and the other employees (who were shown to be in Sheckly’s imagination too later) felt odd in retrospect.

I was in this episode from the beginning. I just feel as if the conclusion did not live up to the prologue.

June 18, 2023- numbers 63, 64, 65

Spoilers

“The Mind and the Matter”

“A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft. A child of the 20th century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again, this time Act Two of his daily battle for survival, and in just a moment our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aides available only in the Twilight Zone.”

Okay.

We have a new least favorite episode. Currently, this episode will replace “Mighty Casey” on my running list of The Twilight Zone episodes. It was another comedic episode that just did not work at all. Archibald Beechcroft is able to make everybody disappear just by concentrating on them? Or he could make everybody just like him?

The episode was dull.

It was totally unbelievable.

“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”

Now this was much better.

There was a touch of comedic undertones in this episode, but it also had a mystery as well as a dark ending.

The report of a UFO crashing brought out a couple of state troopers to investigate during a snowstorm. They found a footprints leading to a local diner where a bus had stopped for a break.

When questioned, the bus driver said that he had six people on the bus, but there were seven people in the diner. He could not identify who was or was not on the bus.

Light flickered. Juke box played on its own. Strange things kept happening.

Everybody was distrustful of each other, even the married couples.

Finally the phone rang and the bridge, which had been keeping the bus driver from heading out, was reported as being fine and passable. The bus went on.

One of the passengers Ross (who was complaining about missing a meeting in Boston) returned to the diner with news that the bridge was not passable after all and the troopers and the bus had fallen through into the river and no one escaped.

Except him… the Martian (who showed off his three arms), who had been sent ahead to scout the place for a potential colony. Haley the cook at the diner told Ross that his colonizers had been intercepted by his own people… from Venus.

I enjoyed this episode and I was never sure who the alien was going to turn out to be. Jack Ely played the crazy old man and he was definitely a red herring, but a hoot to watch.

“The Obsolete Man”

Burgess Meredith returned for the third time to The Twilight Zone, this time as Romney Wordsworth, a librarian in a Fascist society that does not consider him important.

“You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind.  Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.”

A great episode to bring season two to an end. Burgess Meredith is awesome as the librarian who out smarted the state.

Convicted as obsolete and sentenced to be ‘liquidated’ Mr. Wordsworth came up with a plan. He asked to have an audience for his death and for only himself and the executioner to know how it was going to happen.

He then invited the Chancellor to come visit him a half hour before the sentence was to be carried out.

Wordsworth, pointing out the camera that had been installed, told the Chancellor that they were being broadcast as they spoke. He also revealed that he had told the executioner to set a bomb to blow up the apartment. When the Chancellor went to leave, he realized that the door was locked and that Wordsworth had trapped him too.

There was more here though. Earlier during Wordsworth’s hearing, the Chancellor stated that there was no God and Wordsworth disagreed. So as the clock ticked away before the explosion, Wordsworth read from the Bible.

With a minute remaining, the Chancellor shouted out “in God’s name” and Wordsworth agreed in God’s name, he would let him go, sparing his life form the bomb, which exploded seconds after. When the Chancellor returned to the court, he discovered he had been replaced and had been declared obsolete himself.

This episode played off the idea of a personal religion (faith in one God) vs. buying into a autonomous state government. The episode did imply that the state was bad as it referenced Hitler and Stalin.

Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver (who was the Chancellor) were fantastic in these roles and their work together in Wordsworth’s room was some of the best interplay of the season.

Tomorrow, I will be starting Season Three.

June 18, 2023- numbers 61,62

Spoilers

“The Silence”

Who could spend a year alone in a specially designed room, away from those you love, without talking…even saying a single word, for $500,000?

That is the premise of this episode of The Twilight Zone. And it is all because of a bet.

“The note that this man is carrying across a club room is in the form of a proposed wager, but it’s the kind of wager that comes without precedent. It stands alone in the annals of bet-making as the strangest game of chance ever offered by one man to another. In just a moment, we’ll see the terms of the wager and what young Mr. Tennyson does about it. And in the process, we’ll witness all parties spin a wheel of chance in a very bizarre casino called the Twilight Zone.”

This is the most realistic episode that I have seen of The Twilight Zone to this point in the series. Albeit the ending was shocking and unexpected, there was nothing that made it feel like it needed to be in the Twilight Zone to happen.

Still, the steps taken by Tennyson in order to win the bet is unbelievable and, once again, it felt cruel to then not have Colonel Archie Taylor have the money in the end.

Here’s hoping that Tennyson can have those nerves reattached to his vocal chords and sue the living crap out of Archie.

“Shadow Play”

There have been actors in The Twilight Zone that I do not recognize until after I research the episode. This is one of those cases as Dennis Weaver starred in this episode as Adam Grant, a defendant convicted of murder and sentenced to death via the electric chair. However, the twist is that Grant claims that this is all a dream and that he dreams this every night…and that everyone in the dream will be destroyed when he is electrocuted.

Grant desperately tries to convince everyone who comes to see him of his story. This time, he is able to convince reporter Paul Carson, who tries to convince D.A. Henry Ritchie.

This is another classic sci-fi trope, where everything comes out of the mind of one person. I know on LOST, one of the rumored solutions to what was going on was that this was all a dream by Hurley.

“We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone’s feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live, instead, – in The Twilight Zone?”

This was a clever episode that puts some good performances together with a well written script.

June 18, 2023-numbers 58,59,60

There are three straight really good episodes in this post, following one of the worst of the series last time.

Spoilers

“Long Distance Call”

It is Billy’s sixth birthday. And he was excited. So was his Grandma. She and the young boy had a special relationship, but she knew something he did not. She did not have long left in this world. Instead, she would take up residence … in the Twilight Zone.

Grandma gave a birthday gift to Billy, a toy telephone that would allow him to speak to her at any time. Little did anyone know that she truly meant that.

After she died, Billy continued to talk to his grandma on the phone and she would tell him how lonely she was and she tried to convince him to come to be with her. After an attempt to kill himself in the pool, his father spoke on the toy phone to his mother, begging her to let Billy go.

He survived, but clearly had years of therapy bills to pay.

This was one of the darkest episodes of the show that we have gotten yet. Dealing with the topic of death is not uncommon for the show, but the idea of a five-year old trying to commit suicide (first by running out in front of a car and then by drowning himself) is absolutely dark.

There were some excellent performances in this episode, especially Phillip Abbott, who played Chris, Billy’s father. His monologue on the phone begging his mother to let his son live was very powerful and spoke to the idea of faith. Grandma was played by Lili Darvas and she gave a very creepy, almost magical performance as a woman on the brink of death who had suffered loss in her life and did not want to be alone.

This was one of my favorite episodes of the series so far.

“A Hundred Yards over the Rim”

“The year is 1847, the place is the territory of New Mexico, the people are a tiny handful of men and women with a dream. Eleven months ago, they started out from Ohio and headed west. Someone told them about a place called California, about a warm sun and a blue sky, about rich land and fresh air, and at this moment, almost a year later, they’ve seen nothing but cold, heat, exhaustion, hunger, and sickness. This man’s name is Christian Horn. He has a dying eight-year-old son and a heartsick wife, and he’s the only one remaining who has even a fragment of the dream left. Mr. Chris Horn, who’s going over the top of a rim to look for water and sustenance and in a moment will move into the Twilight Zone.”

Hey, it is Uncle Ben! Cliff Robertson, who played Ben Parker in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, starred in this episode of The Twilight Zone. I did not recognize him immediately. However, Gomez Adams, aka John Astin, I did recognize right away as Chris’s friend and co-pioneer.

Christian stumbled from his small caravan, containing his son who was desperately sick and apparently dying, from 1847 into the future. He comes across a station/diner where he is helped by a friendly couple. They were surprised to see him carrying such an antique, but new looking, rifle.

Chris learned several things, including that he was now in 1961, that they had medicine that could help his son, and that his son would grow up and become a famous doctor who was credited in doing great work to help children’s diseases.

Stealing the penicillin, Chris ran back to the rim where he had done his time travel and he found his way back to the past and saved his son.

This was an early example of the predestination paradox, which, according to Wikipedia, “is a theoretical proposition, wherein by means of either retrocausality or time travel, an event (an action, information, object, or person) is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-mentioned event.” The idea of this, also called Causal Loop became a well-used trope in science fiction and showed how ahead of the times Rod Serling was.

“The Rip Van Winkle Caper”

Four gold thieves execute a weird plan to escape from the ‘heat’ after robbing a train of its gold shipment coming from Fort Knox.

“Introducing, four experts in the questionable art of crime: Mr. Farwell, expert on noxious gases, former professor, with a doctorate in both chemistry and physics; Mr. Erbie, expert in mechanical engineering; Mr. Brooks, expert in the use of firearms and other weaponry; and Mr. De Cruz, expert in demolition and various forms of destruction. The time is now, and the place is a mountain cave in Death Valley, U.S.A. In just a moment, these four men will utilize the services of a truck placed in cosmoline, loaded with a hot heist cooled off by a century of sleep, and then take a drive into The Twilight Zone.”

They decided to put themselves into suspended animation for 100 years, knowing that they would no longer be sought after and they could spend their riches how they’d like.

Things did not go exactly to plan.

I enjoyed the fates of these criminals as they each wound up facing justice in their own way. Mr. De Cruz was a horrible person and one wonders why the others in this little group put up with him. I especially enjoyed his own, well-deserved fate.

Even more ironic was that in this future, gold was no longer valuable, and their plan would not have worked even if they hadn’t all died along the way.

This was a very entertaining episode with watching these four people get their comeuppance, but there were a ton of plot holes or things that someone with common sense would have thought about. That pulled this episode down a bit, but it is still an enjoyable watch.

June 17, 2023- numbers 56, 57

Spoilers

“Static”

Oh, the good old days. Back when the TV wasn’t always on and the music was live on the radio.

This is the basis behind the twentieth episode of season two of The Twilight Zone.

“No one ever saw one quite like that, because that’s a very special sort of radio. In its day, circa 1935, its type was one of the most elegant consoles on the market. Now with its fabric-covered speakers, its peculiar yellow dial, its serrated knobs, it looks quaint and a little strange. Mr. Ed Lindsay is going to find out how strange very soon when he tunes in to the Twilight Zone.”

Ed Lindsay was a very unhappy man. He had grown older and would grumble about everything, especially the TV that was in the house. When he found an old time radio, which somehow seemed to be able to connect to radio stations from years past, Ed started to feel more alive.

This episode was more of a character piece with Ed and his one time love Vinnie Broun, a woman who still lived with him in the same boarding house. By this point, their love was gone. Vinnie, along with the professor, worried that Ed was losing his grasp on reality, and they give away the radio. Ed retrieves it and winds up back in the past for good.

I think this was intended to be a romantic story, a second chance for Ed and Vinnie, but I do not see it that way. This feels almost like an alcoholic whose family members try and remove all the liquor by pouring it down the drain. It never works because the pull is too strong.

It could also be a way to speak against the inclusion of television into the lives of people, which considering The Twilight Zone is a TV program, that would be pretty ironic. Ed certainly had grumblings about the TV while the rest of the borders were transfixed by it and implied that radio was more of an activity to foster creativity and imagination than the TV.

Not sure what was intended in this episode worked very well. The acting was fine, but I am not sure the youthful reunion at the episode’s end was what the writers of the episode wanted.

“The Prime Mover”

When the main protagonist of an episode of The Twilight Zone is as unlikeable as Ace Larson was, the episode is difficult to enjoy.

Buddy Epson was much more likable, relatable in this episode a Jimbo, a down-home fellow who has telekinetic powers. The character of Jimbo in “The Prime Move” reminded me very much of Big Ed Hurley from Twin Peaks, lovable, kind of slow witted.

When Ace discovered Jimbo’s power, he immediately started planning how to take advantage of it. He took Jimbo and his girlfriend Kitty to Vegas to have Jimbo use his TK to manipulate the system and rig it in his favor.

Although he made a ton of money, Ace was not happy, anxious to keep going. Only when Jimbo said that he was too tired to continue did Ace take a break. However, he got in a fight with Kitty, who stormed off, and then he ‘hired’ a Vegas cigarette girl to go out on the town with him.

He then taunted a Chicago gangster into a game of craps with him in his room. After winning all the money, Ace went all in on one more roll of the dice. However, Jimbo had lost his power and Ace lost everything. At the end, Ace was back in the diner where they worked and he proposed to Kitty.

I had a lot of issues with this episode, all centered around the character of Ace. I already mentioned how I did not like the character, which is a major drawback. I did not feel like the character that I had seen this whole episode would react to losing all the money in the manner in which he did. The show seemed to imply that it shocked him back to normal, but I saw no evidence of that. Then, when he proposed to Kitty at the end after going out on the town with the cigarette girl (who showed up during the craps game implying that they were going away together), I literally said out loud “no.” Ace is going to be the type who will turn on Kitty the second things get tough and be cheating on her with some other woman. I don’t want them together because there is no happy ending for Ace.

June 16, 2023-number 55

Spoilers

“Mr. Dingle, the Strong”

Burgess Meredith returned to the Twilight Zone, bringing with him Don Rickles for this mostly comedic episode of The Twilight Zone.

I have to say that most of the time when The Twilight Zone dips into its comedic well for an episode, it does not work nearly as well. This was a ‘funny’ episode that was not very funny. Even with the iconic Don Rickles in tow.

Burgess Meredith is a fantastic actor and he carries himself well, but he just did not feel in place in this episode. He couldn’t even save what was a very disappointing episode.

There was so much slapstick involved in the show and it just was not very funny. The aliens who give Mr. Dingle the super strength are a boring design and make little sense. The aliens at the end that are the little kids were worse yet.

Definitely one of the lower episodes of the show which has failed as of yet to show me a really effective comedy episode.

June 15, 2023- numbers 53, 54

Spoilers

“Twenty-Two”

Premonition. The feeling that something is not right. Twenty-Two is a Twilight Zone episode that looks at the phenomenon, even though we do not know that until the very end.

“This is Miss Liz Powell. She’s a professional dancer and she’s in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she’ll wake up and we’ll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone.”

There was some really strong, subtle hints throughout this episode, especially when dealing with the character of Liz Powell. I enjoyed this character piece as she went through the creepy hospital and had to deal with her slimy agent. You’re never quite sure what is going on, much like a dream in actuality. I’m sure, just like I did, everyone thought that this dream was foretelling something tragic at the hospital itself. Liz’s insistence that it was not a dream, despite the evidence to the contrary, kept the audience wondering what was going on.

It was strange after she had left the hospital and was on her way on a plane because the hospital was not involved any longer. However, as things started happening in the waking world as they happened in Liz’s dream, I had the idea of what was happening.

The metaphor of the morgue being the doomed airplane and the sinister flight attendant with her line, “Room for one more, honey” representing death itself was more apparent once it was out of the hospital. I actually expected the plane to crash, but the explosion in mid-air did surprise me.

There was a surreal feel to the episode and the dream-like state worked very well.

“The Odyssey of Flight 22”

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue…“

That line is one of the best from 1980’s Airplane! and this episode of The Twilight Zone made me think about that. Mainly because the voice of actor, John Anderson, who was the pilot Captain Farver, sounded a lot like Robert Stack who appeared in that movie.

His voice and the setting aboard an airplane were the only connections I had to Airplane! though as this episode dealt with a much more sci-fi aspect than the parody/comedy of Airplane!.

The crew aboard the plane (which they called a ‘ship’ which I found funny) were very competent and were flying easily on their way to New York. Strange occurrences began to happen. Captain Farver noticed a feeling in the plane, something like picking up of speed. The radio could not contact anyone and other instruments were out of whack.

When they went through a bizarre light and what felt like terrible turbulence and they were not sure what was going on. The glance out of the window as they approached Manhattan Island revealed what had happened to the plane.

Time travel pokes its head back into another Twilight Zone episode and was another very effective use of it. The crew decided to try and go back through the light again, this time ending up in 1939.

A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now, searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they’ll find. But you and I know where she is. You and I know what’s happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast—engines that sound searching and lost—engines that sound desperate—shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home—from The Twilight Zone. “

I loved the idea of this plane just lost in time, flying around for as long as it could, trying desperately to find its way home. This episode was Airplane! crossed with a sprinkling of Quantum Leap.

June 14, 2023-number 52

Spoilers

“A Penny for your Thoughts”

“Mr. Hector B. Poole, resident of the Twilight Zone. Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it will come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million, it’ll land on its edge. Mr. Hector B. Poole, a bright human coin – on his way to the bank.”

Dick York, eventual star of Bewitched as Darren Stevens, returned to the Twilight Zone as Hector Poole, a bank employee who, through a strange twist of fate and luck, gained the ability to hear the thoughts of other people.

This is a fairly light episode that takes this premise and shows that there might be a drawback to being able to read other people’s thoughts. The whole deal with the old man who was thinking about robbing the bank but never intending to do it is a good example.

The episode also showed us how superficial some people could be, saying one thing out loud while thinking something totally opposite on the inside. The episode does not speak well of the nature of humankind, even having our straight-laced protagonist, Hector, use his mind reading ability to blackmail his boss over a weekend tryst.

Still, “A Penny for your Thoughts” is fine. It is an enjoyable enough episode to watch and Dick York showed a skill for comedy, especially with his facial reactions that would become so important for him later on in his career as Bewitched.

June 13, 2023- numbers 50 & 51

Spoilers

“The Whole Truth”

One wonders if the creators of Jim Carrey’s movie Liar Liar was inspired by this episode.

“This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr. Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car – but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There’s something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments, they’ll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he’s never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr. Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjecture, but as to where they’re heading for, this we know, because all of them – and you – are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone.“

When Harvey Hunnicut bought the Model A car from the little old man, it seemed as if Hunnicut was ripping the man off. Oh how the tables turned.

As the little old man left the car salesman, he informed him that the car was haunted and that he would be haunted until he sold the car.

Little did Hunnicut know that it meant that he would be unable to tell a lie.

A used car salesman unable to lie? How could he sell anything? Especially when he had a lot full of lemons and clunkers. Hunnicut found that the truth was not a friend to him.

Overall, this episode was fairly light and, truthfully, kind of dull. He faced some initial consequences for his lies, especially form the wife on the phone, but he was able to get it sold without too much difficulty, passing the curse along to another person.

This lacked much of the Twilight zone’s usual oomph. The episode was not great.

“The Invaders”

And we went from a weak episode to one of the best of the series. The Invaders was totally original and featured a fantastic performance from Agnes Morehead (who would become Endora on Bewitched).

The dialogue of the episode was almost completely absent. It started off with the typical opening narration:

“This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who’s been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror, which is even now coming at her from – the Twilight Zone.“

An isolated woman and a spaceship arriving in her home. However, the spaceship had miniature invaders-what appeared as robots, inside. The woman battled against the invaders, trying to protect herself and her home.

The old woman searched throughout her house, ending up capturing one of the invaders in a blanket, and beating it into unconsciousness. She then tossed it into the fire in the fireplace.

During this entire episode, we only hear the grunt and the screams of the woman. Never does she talk to the invaders or talk to herself during the horrifying time. It creates a great deal of tension and anxiety. The music from Jerry Goldsmith amplifies the atmosphere.

When she returned to the roof where the spaceship is located, she hears a message from the invaders back to their home planet saying to abandon this mission, do not strike a counterattack. There is a race of giant creatures here. The woman finishes off the ship and we see that it is from the US Air Force. The invaders were humans in suits, not miniature robots.

“These are the invaders, the tiny beings from the tiny place called Earth, who would take the giant step across the sky to the question marks that sparkle and beckon from the vastness of the universe only to be imagined. The invaders…who found out that a one-way ticket to the stars beyond has the ultimate price tag…and we have just seen it entered in a ledger that covers all the transactions in the universe…a bill stamped “Paid in Full” and to be found unfiled in the Twilight Zone”

This was an awesome ending to a tense and nerve-wracking episode. Agnes Morehead does an amazing job acting without any dialogue. She created a ton of sympathy for the old woman when you thought she was trying to save herself from some alien robots.

Top notch episode.

June 12, 2023- numbers 47, 48, 49

Spoilers

“The Night of the Meek”

Merry Christmas, from The Twilight Zone.

“This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institution, that of the department-store Santa Claus in a road-company version of ‘The Night Before Christmas’. But in just a moment Mr. Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found… in the Twilight Zone.“

We get the drunk Santa story that we have seen so many times since. Henry Corwin, after being fired from his Santa job at the mall for being drunk, found a Santa gift bag that allowed Corwin to pull out whatever the gift receiver wanted.

The police believed he had stolen the stuff, but they could not prove anything. He was able to show them that he could pull anything they asked for out of the bag.

He ran out of gifts and wound up getting in the sleigh and becoming the real Santa Claus.

This was an okay episode. We’ve seen this before, but I’m not sure they saw this at the time (1960).

“Dust”

We get another Western on The Twilight Zone. This one deals with a very dark issue and one of sadness.

“There was a village. Built of crumbling clay and rotting wood. And it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal wanting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. For the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They began to destroy themselves.”

The episode started off with a terrible tragic event. We find out that Luis Gallegos, who is in jail and being prepared to be hanged, had been drunk and accidentally ran over a little girl with his wagon.

We get one of the worst characters I have seen on The Twilight Zone in the peddler Sykes. This guy was so horrible in this episode. He taunted Luis while he was in jail. He was snarky with the Sheriff. He was looking to make money off the pain of Luis’s father. This guy should have received the ironic ending of the episode. He did not though. He did see, apparently, the errors of his ways.

Sykes sold Luis’s father a bag full of dirt from the ground and pretended as if it were magic dust. Luis’s father showed up at the hanging and threw the dirt around hoping it would work.

Shockingly, the rope snapped, dropping Luis to the ground. The parents of the little girl decided that this was a sign and Luis should be left alive.

I liked this episode quite a bit, but I did want Sykes to pay for his cruelness. The ending did feel a little underwhelming.

“Back There”

The Professor winds up in a time travel episode.

“Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, D.C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical, because who ever heard of a man going back in time? Before tonight, that is, because this is—The Twilight Zone.”

Peter Corrigan is involved with his friends in a discussion on time travel. As he was leaving the club, he finds himself transported to 1865, on the day that Abraham Lincoln was to be assassinated.

When Corrigan realized when he was, he tries going all over the place trying to stop the assassination. He winds up at the police station arrested. A man shows up and takes him out of the jail.

The man takes him to a room and drugs him. It was actually John Wilks Booth who took Corrigan so he would no longer be yelling about the assassination.

When Corrigan awoke, he discovered it was too late and that Lincoln was killed. He wound up back in the present and discovered that someone who had worked in the club before, now was a member because of things that happened when Corriganhad gone back in the past.

This was interesting. They took plenty of liberties here, especially with Booth. It’s great to see the Professor once again.